On Labor Day, Matt and I went on a 20-mile ride along some of the country roads around Sammamish, Redmond, Carnation, and Fall City. The weather went out of its way to be perfect, and I had hand-picked a course that was almost ridiculously scenic. By the time we had gone five or six miles, Matt was going on and on about what a great time he was having. And then at the end of the ride he talked about how great it is to go biking and see the country and how we’ve got to go again soon.

That’s a good sign.

Kool-Aid Dose #2

Flash forward to Tuesday evening. Matt e-mails me saying that things have come up, he won’t be able to bike in to work with me the next morning. Then, at 7:30 the next morning, right as I’m about to take off for work, Matt calls. He’s managed to juggle his schedule, so he can ride in after all.

That’s a really good sign.

Kool-Aid Dose #3

Yesterday, on the ride home from work, I started talking to Matt about trying to make it up Thompson Hill Road — a very steep hill about a mile long — with just one stop, instead of two. "Go slow, use a low gear, try not to go anaerobic," I advised.

Matt churned up the hill in a low gear, and got past the first point where he usually needs to walk it. I expected him to get off between there and the second place he’d been dismounting, but no. He kept climbing toward the second place he usually stops. Matt wanted to clean Thompson Hill.

As he got to the final third of the climb, Matt started wobbling. That’s when I told him something important: "You’ve still got one more gear you can go down." Matt shifted into his granny and pulled to the top. He was suffering, but he put his head down, and he cleaned it.

Matt’s hooked.

Today’s weight: 164.4 lbs.

7 Comments

al troutwig sighiting there he was again comenting on Tennis wearing a suit not a polo there was a moment i thought he was talking about lance however it was discovery he was talking about another retired person who made a comeback Martina Navartolova she now only plays doubles i guess but who knows maybe they will pan the audiance and find waldo…i mean Lance just so he can talk about him again…maybe USA network should also bring in the side kick bob-o phil and paul

Chris,Some new inventions: punctuation and capitalization. They’ll make your post a lot easier to read.Anyway, fatty, that is awesome that Matt has come to embrace biking. The beauty of biking is that it gives us all challenges that we otherwise would never face. In this day and age we rarely are physically challenged (which is good, really), but we lack the opportunity to look back on a big challenge and say: "I conquered that." The first time I took the wife on a long distance ride (only 32 miles) she was cursing me most of the way, but when we got to the climax of the ride and looked back at where we had been, she had an immense sense of accomplishment and fulfillment that is hard to duplicate anywhere else.Great blog/writing. Keep it up.

So true about how nice it is to have challenges. I went and rode up Mt. Mitchell last weekend and kinda thought "Well now I’ve done it, I am in no hurry to do it again". As the weekend approaches, I am now thinking "I bet I can chop a half hour off the round trip if I really tried". Like any good fat cyclist would, of course.For the record, for about a 45 mile round trip, it took me 4 1/2 hours. 3 up, 1 1/2 down. Ouch, a good 17.5 miles of serious climbing (7-10%) and a couple more miles of 1-2%, maybe 4 miles of flat/downhill, mostly at the bottom of course. Pretty darn painful, and I can’t wait to do it again.

Let me just remark here that you cyclists are plumb CRAZY! And I mean that in the nicest possible way.Of course, I’d be right there with you if I could. Instead, the most dangerous maneuver I do is to lean to the right, bend over a bit, and turn the thing that increases the resistance, ever so slightly. But when you think about it, that’s pretty risky behavior, considering my girth, high CG, and the distance to the (oak) floor.Oh… and Nikared, thank you for your comment… I thought it was just me who needed crazy stuff like capitalization and punctuation in order to decipher the true import of the written word. A favorite book: Eats, Shoots and leaves.

YAY MATT!!! I expect to see you in the Bldg 17 garage for the commute home; after my torn calf heals – it’s a bad story including a ‘fatter than the fat cyclist’ cyclist and an attempt at doing something that should be left to a ‘less fat than that fat cyclist’ cyclist.